In a medical setting such as a hospital, a central monitoring station provides a central location at which vital signs and other medical information for patients may be displayed. Because of the importance of displaying the vital signs and other medical information to clinicians at the hospital, it is desirable to minimize central monitoring station downtime.
One method of minimizing central monitoring station downtime is to have a backup central monitoring station for each central monitoring station on a medical network in the hospital. If the backup central monitoring station is kept up to date with configuration information, operating system changes, anti-virus changes, etc., a primary central monitoring station can be quickly replaced with the backup central monitoring station when the primary central monitoring station malfunctions.
Having a backup central monitoring station for every central monitoring station on the medical network can be very costly. A lower cost alternative, involving creating the backup central monitoring station when the primary central monitoring station fails, can result in an unacceptable amount of downtime needed to create the backup central monitoring station.